The cost and inconvenience of traveling has increased demand for effective collaboration environments that enable participants from multiple locations to easily connect with one another to discuss a topic. While a conference call may provide a suitable environment for a small group of participants discussing a particular topic, a conference call may not be appropriate for a larger group of participants, or for the discussion of a very complex topic. One problem with a conference call is that the audio streams carrying participant's voices are monaural, and therefore each participant's voice sounds as if it is in the same location. In a conference call with a small number of participants where each participant may know each other, and may recognize others voices, monaural audio streams may be satisfactory. But as participants in a conference call begin to talk simultaneously, as frequently happens as a discussion gains momentum, communications quickly become indecipherable as listeners cannot discern who is saying what. Many conferencing systems attempt to improve this situation by providing participants only the voice signals of the most active speaker, and those of the loudest participant attempting to interrupt the active speaker. This approach, however, effectively limits the conference to a single speaker and tends to prioritize loud and persistent speakers.
Even in the absence of concurrent conversations, participants in a monaural conference call can have trouble recognizing who is speaking unless they personally know the speaker well enough to recognize their voice. Even though a speaker may have previously introduced themselves, it can be difficult several minutes later to recognize the voice of someone you are not familiar with, especially where there are a large number of participants. This is largely because every participant sounds as if they are at the same location, and a listener is left with very few cues by which they can recall who is who. Since it is typically important to know who is talking in a conversation, this can lead to awkward interruptions as listeners ask a speaker to introduce themselves each time the individual begins speaking.
Another shortcoming of conventional collaboration environments, such as a conference call, is an inability to relatively easily implement common problem solving techniques that are used in normal face-to-face meetings. For example, in a business environment, it is common for a group of employees to meet in person in a conference room to discuss a complex topic that includes multiple subtopics. The group may begin discussing the topic, and determine that the most efficient way to resolve the issue is to divide themselves into subgroups, and assign each subgroup a subtopic to resolve. After the subgroups discuss and resolve the issues surrounding their respective subtopic, they meet again as a larger group to collaborate and resolve the overall issue. Unfortunately, it is difficult in a conventional conferencing environment to form subgroups of participants that can separately speak with one another, and easily reform the complete group after the subgroups complete their conversations. Moreover, such subgroups endure the same difficulties inherent in monaural communications mentioned previously.
In view of the shortcomings of conventional collaboration environments, it would be beneficial to provide a collaboration environment that realistically simulates face-to-face meetings. Moreover, it would be beneficial to provide a collaboration environment that allows participants to more easily engage in multiple concurrent conversations and to more easily recognize speakers based on a location of the speaker's voice, and permits forming subgroups of participants in a simple and intuitive manner.